Hearing Voices

Posted on January 9, 2015 by Rosalind C Hughes

“And it was,” he said, “as though the heavens opened, I swear to God; the clouds at that very moment split apart like the Red Sea rising, and the sun striking through, fell warm and heavy on my back;
no, not heavy, but as a light hand on my shoulder, bird-boned, filigreed.
It was as though my father reached out of heaven to tell me, all is forgiven; you are loved.” He sighed out, spent.
The weary-wrinkled doctor leaned back a little further in his leather chair.
“Tell me about your Mother,” he began.

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Epiphany: wise gifts

Posted on January 6, 2015 by Rosalind C Hughes

I wonder whether, in the clumsy and hurried packing of a small family with a small child, fleeing for their lives with the essentials and little more, listening over their shoulders for the alarm, the tramp of boots, the metallic clang of steel; in their hurry and their need and their fear, I wonder if they were able even to take with them the myrrh, the frankincense, the gold.

The magi had brought it many miles; from at least far enough away not to know any better, despite their proverbial wisdom, than to consult Herod. They had journeyed for who knows how long – days, weeks, months? Years? Perhaps their whole enlightened lives, since they first looked up and recgnized, realized the stars speaking to them in their bright semaphore; perhaps they had always been on this pilgrimage, their destination, their destiny to meet God, born king of the Jews, a baby human, nestled at his mother’s breast.

That must have been confusing; disorienting, you might say.

The remarkable thing is that nevertheless they trusted the instincts and the star’s bright semaphore, the sign that had drawn them to this place, this child; apparently unencumbered by disappointment, anxiety or regret, they laid at the feet of a nondescript infant in a nondescript town outside of the great city, out of earshot of the temple and out of sight of the palace; they laid there on the ground the treasures of their accumulation of days and years and miles: the myrrh, frankincense, the gold they had brought across the wilderness, braving bandits and who knows what treachery to offer their gifts to God.

And after all that effort and expectation, and after all that time, and all of those miles, and all that money, they asked for no surety that their prayers would be answered to their satisfaction. They asked no place at the right hand of the child who must need wise advisors; every king who was any king had them. They asked no favour, no future; they left without even finding out whether their gifts would go with the child, or be bartered or used as bribes on their escape to Egypt, or abandoned and left to benefit those other families of Bethlehem who were about to suffer devastation. Did the gold go to buy off one or more of Herod’s soldiers? The wise men didn’t stay to find out.

They offered their all at the cradle of God, of Jesus. They offered their journey, their blisters, their tribulations. They offered their time, the days, and the nights spent under starlit skies. The delays on the dark nights when clouds covered the moon and hid the stars from sight. They offered their treasure.

An act of true worship: offering all to God, without ever stopping to check whether God would use it to their liking; they sought nothing in return for the labour and love of their lives, except to know that God has, indeed, come into the world, and to see the face of God look back at them, brighter than any star.

Wise, wise men, indeed.

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Impetuous

Posted on January 5, 2015 by Rosalind C Hughes

For two pins, I’d rip
out every stitch, if it
weren’t a waste of time.

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Year B Christmas 2: the flight into Egypt and beyond

Posted on January 3, 2015 by Rosalind C Hughes

This is not a story about how special, important, and indispensable Jesus was; that his family out of all the others in Bethlehem was warned to get out of town, so that he alone out of all the little boys in Bethlehem could grow up to be the Messiah, the Christ. So that he alone out of all the little boys in Bethlehem could grow up. Because if one thing is clear from reading the Bible, the Gospels, from our prayer and our own lives with God, it is that every one of those children was dear to God; every one of those mothers and fathers, God would have spared their pain if God could; that if those children were not important, not special, not indispensable, then there would have been no purpose to the Incarnation, the birth of Jesus at all.

“For God so loved the world that he sent his only begotten Son…”

The beginning of Matthew’s gospel is clear about setting up a scriptural context and mandate for Jesus. Everything that happens does so “that the scripture may be fulfilled.” Jesus has to flee as a refugee to Egypt so that the Exodus can be revisited, the theme of deliverance brought into play: deliverance from slavery, captivity, oppression; deliverance from the desert, the wilderness; deliverance from exile and delivery into the new world, the Promised Land of freedom and plenty, the land where God dwells. And all of this, if you read the old stories, is delivered only by God.

The only piece of scripture which Matthew does not say must be fulfilled is the one about Rachel crying for her children after Herod has killed them all. That did not have to happen, suggests Matthew. Even he balks at such a level of determinism, such fatalism. No; that atrocity was all on Herod.

In the old story, it was the Pharaoh, a foreign and godless king, who brought down chaos by his stubborn refusal to release the people of God. In the end, he called down even death, even the death of his own son, the children of his own people. In the new story, Herod is one of us, one of the people of Jerusalem, of Bethlehem, one of the chosen people of God; and he does it to his own people, his own flesh and blood. We have turned upon ourselves, and it is from ourselves and our own sin that God is born to save us.

We do not have to look far to find the cousins of Joseph, Mary and Jesus fleeing for their lives, placing their safety in uncertain guides, living on the edges of life and death in exile, in borderlands, in no-man’s land, at the mercy of the merciless.

In the past week, not one but two cargo vessels have been intercepted off the shores of Italy after their crews abandoned their human cargo, refugees from Syria and from northern Africa, leaving the un-crewed ships on collision courses with the Italian coast, carrying hundreds of people, including children, and at least one woman who gave birth to her child, apparently even as the rescue was underway. Modern-day soldiers of Herod, mercenaries who cared nothing for their cargo but only for their money, abandoned them in stormy seas to await their fate.

And just in case we are tempted to blame Pharaoh – foreign kings, godless religion, not our problem – have we forgotten so quickly the children on our own borders, bussed into dormitories full of fear and bewilderment, children whose parents had such despair in their own land and such faith in our goodwill to all people that they sent us their flesh and blood? And we held up signs and shouted at the innocents, “No one wants you here.”

Have we forgotten so quickly the children killed by our own grown-up guns, the lives maimed by our own sin? Herod is one of us, and it is from our own sin that God was born to save us.

But here’s the thing: it is from our own sin that God was born to save us. Jesus came in order to deliver us from slavery and oppression, from sin and evil, from death in all of its guises. God became incarnate, took flesh and dwelt among us because God so loved the world that God could not stay away. Because God so loved those children, of Bethlehem, of the borderlands, of Cudell Park, that God became one of them, one with them, so that they would know, each of them, that God was with them: Emmanuel.

Jesus was not saved from danger, from Herod’s jealous rage, because he was more important than the other children in Bethlehem. Jesus was born into the same danger that they were because God so loved them world that God would stop at nothing to deliver it from that danger.

Jesus became a refugee, a borderland survivor, a displaced person with no home, no country, no security, with only the clothes on his back and whatever his parents could carry because God so loved the world that God could not imagine telling a child that no one wanted him; God wanted us all to know that even those whom the world rejects as outcasts, or abandons at sea, bear the image of the Christ child in their stories, in their lives.

“For God so loved the world” is not a romantic story of clean straw, shining stable lights and gentle cattle lowing. It is the story of our lives, of God entering the very heart of our divisions, our distress, our sin and our sorrow, in order to deliver us out of them, by the grace of God’s love for each and every child of Bethlehem; each and every child of God.

And to those who believe, who count themselves as followers of Christ, it is an invitation, to do the work of love: to love the world as God loves us; to love the world because God loves us; to carry on the work of delivering hope out of despair, comfort out of sorrow, justice out of violence, peace out of mercy, light in the darkness,

remembering the Light that has come into the darkness, which the darkness has not comprehended nor overcome.

[ Because this is the season of new resolutions, I’m going to propose a little homework assignment between this week and next. Next Sunday we celebrate the Baptism of Our Lord, which is an opportunity to review and renew our own baptismal promises. It is precisely those promises which mark our commitment and give us the chance to avoid the horrible sin of Herod, and to live instead with the love that God has for the world.

We promise:

to reaffirm our renunciation of evil and renew our commitment to Christ;

to continue in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in the prayers;

to persevere in resisting evil; whenever we fall into sin, repenting and returning to the Lord;

to proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ;

to seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving our neighbour as ourself;

to strive for justice and peace among all people; respecting the dignity of every human being.

Each of these; all of these we are charged to remember and employ, with God’s help. We revisit them at intervals throughout the year, when we celebrate our baptism and share it with new Christians. Sometimes, one will speak more loudly than another to one of us or to another.

So, remembering that invitation, to do the work of love: to love the world as God loves us; to love the world because God loves us; to carry on the work of delivering hope out of despair, comfort out of sorrow, justice out of violence, peace out of mercy, light in the darkness; I wonder if there is one of these that offers itself as a mantra for your new year, one that will be your focus for faith and faithfulness, not forgetting the others, but one to keep as your touchstone, to keep you connected in all that you say and do and are in this year to your baptismal covenant, the source and reminder of new life with God. (You can remind yourself of them in pages 292-294 of the Book of Common Prayer.)

I wonder if you will bring that promise with you next week. I wonder how it will be worked out in the year to come; but that, dear reader, is a sermon for another day. ]

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New wine and old skin

Posted on December 31, 2014 by Rosalind C Hughes

It is a truth universally acknowledged that
we prefer beginnings to endings,
opening lines to famous last words;
and so we usher in the year with
bells and whistles; fireworks
obliterate the unforgotten, bury the
little piles of guilt, glinting with
the tears unshed by cold hearts
broken in anew each passing day;
we say, “happy”, as we turn our backs
and pretend it never happened,
nor will again; our faces shine
with the empty light of what has
yet to be.
And would you have us
turn again to the harrowed husks
of last year’s selves, and hand them
into the next new thing; or whisper
words of sweet release as we slough
them, dessicated, into the abyss?

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Christmas 2014

Posted on December 26, 2014 by Rosalind C Hughes

On Christmas Eve, we talked about miracles and the veil between heaven and earth rent by angel song and the birth of God, the love of God borne into the world by a baby.
The next morning, wondering what to say next, I remembered the story of our first child’s first Christmas, or the first one that she knew. She was old enough to be aware of the event, but not old enough for anticipation, so that everything was a surprise, an unexpected delight. She had a very good Christmas.
But the real surprise was the next morning, when she got up and came downstairs and discovered all of her opened gifts still under the tree (there wasn’t much of that small room that wasn’t under the tree); still there, still hers, still an unexpected delight. She was overjoyed all over again.
The next morning, for Mary, Jesus was still there. It was only the beginning of his story. It was only the middle of our story with God.
Perhaps that was something of what John meant, when he talked about light coming into the world, and the darkness had not overcome it; it blazed on, even so.
So that with every act of love and forgiveness and grace that we receive, and with every act of justice and mercy and love that we offer, we may remember that the story of God’s love has no ending.
After even the longest night, when we awaken the next morning, we find that the darkness has not overcome it.

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Christmas Eve: love you to Bethlehem and back

Posted on December 24, 2014 by Rosalind C Hughes

There is a tradition that the night between Christmas Eve and Christmas Day is a time for miracles. Beatrix Potter, who wrote the Peter Rabbit books, said that,

it is in the old story that all the beasts can talk, in the night between Christmas Eve and Christmas Day in the morning (though there are very few folk that can hear them, or know what it is that they say.)

Beatrix Potter, The Tailor of Gloucester (Frederick Warne, 1987 edn)

And there has been a lot of attention paid this year, on its one hundredth anniversary, to the so-called Christmas truce between the Allied and German forces in the trenches of World War I, when beleaguered soldiers sang Christmas carols across the battlefield, and even exchanged gifts of the goodies sent from home.

It wasn’t long before the peace broke back out into all-out war, but for that brief time of respite, it must have seemed as though the heavens were smiling on them, there in the mud and the mire; must have sounded as though the angels were singing with them, Peace on earth, goodwill to all people.

Certainly, we could use a miracle or two this year, this season. We could use some respite. We could use some peace.

But the real miracle of Christmas is not about respite, or a break from the grueling realities of life. Just the opposite. It is about the very fact that life goes on, with its struggle and strife, and the miracle is that as shabby and shameful as we can be, with our wars and our worries; as silly and unnecessary as we can get with our greed and our distractions; as human and prone to error as we show ourselves time after time, that God is in it with us.

The miracle of Christmas is not that life as usual ends, or is even suspended, but that God loves us in the very midst of it, in the middle of unmade beds and unmade Christmas pies; in the middle of family squabbles and tantrums; in the middle of our divisions and yes, our sin; God loves us.

Far from laying back and letting it all go, God is actively labouring to be born among us.

That is why the angels sing. That is why the shepherds run. That is why the wise men come and the very stars gather to celebrate, illuminate the small, stumble-down, tumble-down stable of Christmas card pictures and children’s nativity plays, or whichever humble home with a manger of hay Jesus found to be born into; because his birth, in reality, was not so much unlike yours or mine.

As the Christmas carol says,

Day by day like us he grew. He was little, weak and helpless. Tears and smiles like us he knew. And he feeleth for all our sadness, And he shareth in our gladness.

(“Once in Royal David’s City,” words: Cecil Frances Humphreys Alexander, Hymns for Little Children, 1848)

That is the miracle: that God is with us, born to be one of us, so that we may know that God knows us inside and out, that God loves us inside and out, to Bethlehem and back.

Tomorrow, the cats will sound like tortured violins again, and the sides will draw up their lines again, and peace on earth will feel like a dream deferred.

But God is dreaming with us, snoring in the manger with sweet baby’s breath. And there is no going back from that. God, Emmanuel, Jesus Christ is here to stay

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Year B Advent 4: Annunciation

Posted on December 21, 2014 by Rosalind C Hughes

The archangel had had a busy season. Nothing is heard of him for the greater part of the Bible, but now within six months he has visited Zechariah in the temple to announce the advent of John, who would become the baptizer; and now he is in Galilee, telling Mary that she, a young woman without the experience of a man, will bear a child, Jesus.

For Zechariah and Elizabeth, the announcement was the end of years, of decades of waiting. Elizabeth said, “Now the Lord has taken my shame from me.” And yet for Mary, the thing itself was shameful, or would be if anyone but God suggested it.

Zechariah must have prayed every time he entered the temple for his shift, to find favour with God, finally to complete his family; in those days, the choice to remain childless was not even dreamt of. Joseph, on the other hand, faced with the prospect of Mary’s pregnancy, would be hard pushed to find it as a sign of God’s favour. Gabriel ran one more mission there, to visit him in a dream, tying up loose ends.

This annunciation, then, was not the answer to a plea or persistent prayer, but the definitive and independent divine action of a God who was ready to act in love, and who was looking for a willing partner.

And she didn’t fall out laughing, like Sarah. She didn’t burst out singing, like Hannah, at least not right away. She didn’t say, “Pull the other one, it’s got bells on!” like poor dumb Zechariah, or hide herself away like Elizabeth. Instead, perplexed, she pondered the angel’s words, wondering what sort of a greeting this might be.

When we think about prayer, we often think in terms of our own words, our own desires, even if they are on behalf of another; we ask God for guidance, for help, for mercy; we seek reassurance, a response, a reply, even if it is no. We want, we wish, we pray.

How often do we stop to wonder what it is that God is actively seeking to do, out of the love of God, and seeking partners to accomplish, looking for the one who will stop to ponder the will of God, to wonder how they can bear God’s will into being?

We often talk about Advent as a season of waiting: how attentive are we, really, to waiting on the will of God, waiting for the annunciation, the announcement of the new thing that God wants to do, is waiting to do, if only we will allow ourselves to fall in with God’s love?

There’s a poem, “Annunciation” by Edwin Muir, that describes the meeting of the angel and Mary as a pause in the dischronicity between heaven and earth. It reads in part:

The angel and the girl are met.
Earth was the only meeting place.
For the embodied never yet
Travelled beyond the shore of space
The eternal spirits in freedom go.
See, they have come together, see,
While the destroying minutes flow,
Each reflects the other’s face
Till heaven in hers and earth in his
Shine steady there. He’s come to her
From far beyond the farthest star,
Feathered through time…

Chapters into Verse : Poetry in English Inspired by the Bible Volume II: Gospels to Revelation, assembled and edited by Robert Atwan Professor of English Seton Hall University, Laurance Wieder Poet and Instructor Dowling College (Oxford University Press, 1993)

Earth was the only meeting place, our mortal lives the only space into which God can speak and reach us, because we have not yet learnt to reach beyond the stars to the place where the archangels dwell. Only here can we wait, and listen, and reflect on the face of God borne to us by messengers of grace.

Only here can we wait and expect to meet God, incarnate, made and born of flesh and blood, one of us, Jesus, born of Mary, who didn’t fall out laughing or singing, or send the angel away with a flea in his ear, or hide herself away as though she were ashamed of the blessings God bestowed on her. We could learn a lot from Mary. Not that there’s anything wrong with song, or with laughter.

But the ability to sit, perplexed, to sit with the mystery of a sunlit afternoon broken open by an angel, a messenger of God, a plea for partnership with the Creator of all that is and will be, to do a new thing. The ability to ponder, and wonder, and wait.

Edwin Muir’s poem ends,

Outside the window footsteps fall
Into the ordinary day
And with the sun along the wall
Pursue their unreturning way
That was ordained in eternity.
…
But through the endless afternoon
These neither speak nor movement make
But stare into their deepening trance
As if their gaze would never break.

It is not too late, this Advent, this season; it is not too late to take some time to stare into eternity, to ponder what God might want to bring into being, if only we will agree to partner willingly, “Let it be to me,” as Mary said.

It is not too late to take some time to pray not for ourselves, but for God. If that seems odd, then consider that relationship is a two-way street, and if we claim our prayer as a conversation with a living and loving God, then the words and the wishes and the will cannot all be ours. We must leave something for our prayer partner to add, to tell us, to ask of us.

It is a challenge, in the dying days of Advent, to find the time to stare into eternity, but it is only on this earth and in this life that eternity can find us, waiting, because we have not yet found the way beyond the stars. Our time there will come; but what will we do in the meantime?

I wonder what words of grace each of us might hear, if we took a moment this afternoon, or tomorrow, to wait, be still, to stare into eternity. Would we hear the God who loves us send an angel to say,

“Hail, beloved, full of grace. God is with you.”

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Psalm for the fourth funeral

Posted on December 20, 2014 by Rosalind C Hughes

Good God, sometimes mortality
becomes too heavy for us
to bear under;
it piles up like bones.
We flood the valley floor
with grief; our footsteps
sink for want of solid ground.
How long, O Lord, will you wait
to part this salt sea?

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How it feels

Posted on December 19, 2014 by Rosalind C Hughes

When I imagine myself getting up to preach, I see an older middle-aged man of considerable girth sitting in my chair; wearing my robes, he grips either side with surprisingly small hands, and heaves. It takes a while and an effort to get the knees to lock into place, to locate a backbone strong enough to hold him erect. Everything, as he arrives at his vertical destination, quavers and quivers. Ponderous would be a kind word for his journey to the pulpit. At last, he mops his beaded brow, takes a gulp of water, begins to proclaim in my own voice…

The strangest thing is that it never happens that way. I have already wandered out into the middle of the church, in front of everyone, to read the Gospel, before I dogleg like a drunk into the pulpit on the way back to my seat.

I wonder who this geezer is, then, who races me there?

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